A lot has changed for Harry since he escaped his home town of Yallamba ten years ago, headed for the bright lights of the big city. Now he’s the star of Melbourne’s hottest musical, and home is wherever the next standing ovation is – why bother going home to visit his parents when his dad couldn’t care less about his success?

Meanwhile, nothing much has changed for Edwina in the last decade, which is exactly how she likes it. Eddie adores her nursing job and Yallamba community – she can’t imagine living anywhere else. And even if she wanted to, she could never leave her beloved grandparents, who raised her and love her like their very own daughter. She’s not going to abandon them in their old age. Not for anything.

So when Harry and Eddie bump into each other on one of Harry’s flying visits home, their instant mutual attraction seems as pointless as it is intense. There’s no way they could ever work it out… Is there?

One More Song is a delightfully heartfelt rural romance novel by bestselling Australian novelist Nicki Edwards. It’s heartwarming and charming, but also incredibly endearing and filled with realistic emotion and engaging, relatable characters.

Eddie and Harry are two people from different worlds, and One More Song is about them overcoming their differences and learning to follow their dreams and find a way to be together. Following their story and reading about their budding romance is a really enjoyable experience, and I really thought this book was wonderful and really well-written.

Both characters have their flaws. Harry doesn’t really get along with his father and has spent years ignoring the elephant in the room and avoiding trying to work things out with him. Eddie has been living with her grandparents, too devoted to them to really live her own life. When the two meet, they’re able to help each other. They are able to tackle their problems and realise what it is that they both want.

“How long has he been sick, Mum?”
She shrugged. “A few months.”
“A few months?” He only realised he’d raised his voice when Claire kicked him under the table.
“He never got over that flu,” Jenny said.
Harry frowned. “But that was back in June. Are you saying he’s been sick for six months?”

I think the novel was paced really well, allowing us to really spend time with the characters and feel like we understand them and can sympathise with them. Nicki is really great at crafting three-dimensional, relatable characters.

I did feel like in real life, these two types of people would never be able to actually make a relationship work, but I cast that thought aside and just went along with the book.

“Her face warmed. Normally if a man ogled her like that, she would have told him to look elsewhere, but with Harry it felt different — like he genuinely liked all of her — inside and out.”

I recommend this novel to romance and rural fiction readers. It’s heartfelt and beautiful, but it’s also a fun and addictive novel.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan, Jess Just Reads has been invited to be a part of the One More Song blog tour! See below for my Q&A with Nicki.

***

AUTHOR INTERVIEW WITH NICKI EDWARDS

Congratulations on One More Song! What’s your writing process like?
Thank you so much, Jess. My writing process is very “hit and miss”. Between my kids, my husband’s busy job and my job (I average four days a week in the Intensive Care Unit or Emergency Department working as a nurse), I have to squish my writing in whenever and wherever I can. I’m lucky I love my job so it’s never too much of an interruption from writing and in fact that’s where I get a lot of the material for my medical scenes. I also tend to watch little or no television and am blessed with a husband who doesn’t mind when I lock myself away for hours at a time to write.

It isn’t ideal and can be extremely frustrating, especially when the ideas are flowing or I’m in the middle of edits, but I somehow make it work. Actually, my family make it work by picking up the slack and never complaining when there’s no food in the house and I haven’t cooked dinner for a week! And when I’m in the thick of a story, I don’t sleep much.
If I had to describe my ideal writing process, I would get up at 5.30 to exercise, come home and shower and get dressed in warm, comfy clothes (and ugg boots) and start writing. I’d write up to 8 hours a day or longer, and I’d stay off social media as much as possible because it’s a big, draining, time wasting hole.

This is your eighth novel. Do you learn something new each time you write a book?
Each one has been harder to write than the previous one and I think that’s because I’ve become more self-aware and more critical of my writing style. I’m not a plotter but with each new book I’ve tried to do more outlining than in previous books so I have some idea of where the story is going. That’s because otherwise when I get to the editing stage, my stories tend to be all over the place and my poor editor tears her hair out.

Speaking of editors, I’ve been exceedingly blessed with a sensational editor for this current book (she also edited my last book, The Peppercorn Project) and I’ve learned so much from her – more than I could have learned in a hundred books on writing craft.

Unfortunately, learning is one thing, remembering what she’s taught me and putting it into practice is another thing entirely, and it’s not that easy. I’ve also learned that I use the word “amazing” far too often in my rough drafts!

What kind of research have you had to undertake when writing your novels?
I adore research but it can literally suck days out of my life! I now force myself to write first and come back to research the details later. My books have a lot of medical scenes so obviously I rely on my own medical knowledge but I constantly ask my colleagues the weirdest “what if” and “how” questions. One of the surgeons I work with gets so excited when I approach him with questions. He goes away and comes back with the craziest plot ideas – I think he wishes he was an author! My ED colleagues come up with the best stories – there’s something about medical staff – everyone likes to outdo the latest wildest medical drama. I listen a lot, call it all research and know that I can use barely any of it because no-one would believe me!

Other research includes visiting the settings of my books. I like to walk the streets of the towns and get a feel for the location. My hubby loves to come along to see if there’s any good coffee. If not, the town either gets crossed off the list of potential place settings for my next book or I have to give the place it’s own café! And would you believe I don’t drink coffee and have never tasted it!

You’re a critical care nurse, and your main character in this book is a nurse. Is it fun being able to put your own experiences into a book? Are there any difficulties when doing this?
I love using my experiences as a nurse and the experiences of my colleagues in my books. Many times life is stranger than fiction though and there are some stories that are so unbelievable I could never write them.

The only difficulties I face is when my editors are a bit squeamish and think the scene is a little too “bloody” or technical – then I have to work with them to make the scene as believable as possible but ensure readers don’t skim past it because they don’t understand the jargon or can’t picture what’s happening.

I’m blessed to do a job I love – caring for others is a privilege and one I don’t take lightly. Nursing is an amazing career and I love showing the positive sides of it. I’m not sure in the future whether all my main characters will be nurses, but I don’t intend moving away from the medical dramas in my books.

What do you think is essential when writing rural romance?
I think it’s important to have a love for the setting. I like to think the settings in my book are almost like another character and I love it when readers fall in love with the place I’ve chosen to set my story. One reader contacted me to say she and her husband were planning a trip around Australia and she was desperate to visit Birrangulla after falling in love with the place in my Escape to the Country series. She was devastated to discover it didn’t exist! Birrangulla was a figment of my imagination – a very scaled down version of a regional city in New South Wales where I’d lived for three fabulous years.

Many of the other rural romance writers have one distinct advantage over me and that’s that they actually live in rural Australia! I’m a city girl wishing I lived in the country, so I have to ask lots of questions and read lots of rural romances to get a feel for what it might be like to live there. I am in no doubt I have a totally warped idea of small town country life where everyone knows everyone’s business, but I like to dream and pretend it’s all a perfect world! And when it’s not perfect, I just make-believe!

Who is the first to read your drafts?
My critique partner Andrea Grigg (who is also a romance author) is usually the first to read the rough first drafts and she’s brilliant at helping with some basic editing. My daughter Chloe has recently started reading my first drafts and she has great insight too. Otherwise, the first to read the draft is my editor or agent.

What do you like to read?
I don’t get much time to read these days and it’s not as easy to read for pleasure. I read as many of my fellow rural romance authors books as I can (there’s a brilliant website where they’re all listed in one place – http://www.australianruralromance.com) and I enjoy reading anything with medical scenarios.

I tend to read mostly romance and women’s fiction but I also enjoy legal dramas and crime/suspense novels but that’s rare these days simply because of time. I have about ten favourite authors and I’ll read every one of their books – they always get bumped to the top of my very massive “to be read” pile as soon as they come out. And I prefer to support Aussie authors first.

Finally, what are you working on next?
I am so excited about my next book. The working title is Before He Was Mine and while it’s still set in a small town, has romantic elements and medical scenes, it features three main characters – two women and a man – and probably sits more in the women’s fiction or “life lit” genre than as a romance. I don’t want to give too much away, but I promise it will tug at the heart strings. I also have ideas for the next two books after that. Now I just need someone to grant me the gift of time!

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy and for allowing me to interview Nicki!

A scary shower + three twisty little pigs + a choose your own adventure + a Halloween chicken + a demonic clown + an unexpected gift + terrible twins + a famous dancing dog + a running race like no other = one hilarious book.

Laugh Your Head Off Again and Again is the third compilation from Pan Macmillan, featuring hilarious short stories from some of Australia’s funniest and most well-known children’s authors.

One of the first things I noticed about this book was its bright orange cover, with neon green text and illustrations. Each new story is also titled on bright green paper, with Andrea Innocent’s illustrations scattered throughout the book. The whole package is really striking and I imagine the book would be really eye-catching for a child in a bookstore.

“Ever since I’ve been old enough to have showers I’ve been trying to find a way to fill a shower cubicle up with water. If I put a face-washer over the plughole I can get the water as far up as my ankles, but it always ends up leaking out through the gaps in the door.”
ANDY GRIFFITHS

This book would be a lot of fun for kids. There are plenty of fart jokes, name calling, clown jokes and sibling rivalries. There’s some tongue in cheek humour and lots of sarcasm. My particular favourites are Andy Griffiths, Tristan Bancks, Tony Wilson and Deborah Abela.

“I have another flashback to the painting over my bed, the night he slipped out over the frame and tried to suffocate me with the world’s unfunniest clown fart. It smelt like dead mice, ginger beer and cauliflower. I was drowning in it.”
TRISTAN BANCKS

These stories are imaginative and very funny, and I’d recommend this to kids both female and male. The stories are very gender neutral so the book didn’t feel too much like it was aimed at male readers.

***

AUTHOR INTERVIEW WITH TRISTAN BANCKS

What’s your favourite part of being a children’s author?
Having an outlet for my imagination on the page and then finding ways to bring that story to life in live talks and online.

What was the inspiration behind your story in ‘Laugh Your Head Off Again and Again’?
My story is called ‘Death By Clown’. When I was a kid there was a picture of a very tall, very skinny clown hanging over my bed. I was terrified of it and used to take it down off the wall and put it behind a bookshelf before I went to school. But when I’d get home the clown would be back on the wall and I was never quite sure if it was my mum who had put it back up or the creepy clown himself.

What do you think is essential when trying to write humour for kids?
Don’t hold back. If a crazy, gross or dark idea occurs it’s best to write it and then decide later if it’s totally inappropriate. Most often it’s fine. Kids like stories that push the boundaries of ‘what’s allowed’ and editing ideas in your mind too early robs the reader of the most interesting possibilities.

What are the different challenges between writing for kids and writing for teens?
It’s really just a gear shift in your mind, in the same way that you might tell a verbal story differently to a kid or to a teenager. You highlight different parts of the story and leave out others. Teens can find certain things trivial or annoying that younger children find thrilling or hilarious. I write darker, more serious stuff for older readers (Two Wolves and The Fall) and sillier, funnier stuff for younger kids (My Life series and stories for Laugh Your Head Off). But there’s humour in the older books and a touch of darkness in the younger. I like writing both.

Between writing and appearing at schools & festivals, do you have a routine? How do you juggle your workload?
I spend about seven months of the year writing, four months touring and I have a month off. I’m still writing while I’m touring but not as much and I try not to panic or get frustrated about that. I try to enjoy it all. I’m starting to work on adapting my books for the screen, too, and that’s exciting. I started out in film and TV and I love the work of re-thinking the story for a different medium.

Which Australian author would you love to collaborate with?
I am actually longing to do more collaborative work right now. It gets boring working alone all the time. In saying that, co-writing can be tricky, especially on a book. I really admire Morris Gleitzman’s stuff. I love working with Gus Gordon on the My Life books. Claire Zorn’s books are excellent. I love Markus Zusak’s early Ruben Wolfe series. Not sure if I want to collaborate or just read more of their books!

And finally, what are you working on next?
I’ve just finished editing the latest My Life / Tom Weekly book of comedy short stories for 2018 release. Gus Gordon is illustrating it right now. And I’m writing a novel about a lockdown in a school. It’s inspired by a couple of drills I’ve been part of during school visits. It’s for upper primary / early high school readers and I’m enjoying watching it unfold.

Beastly Lights is a young adult romance novel about a young girl, Freya Coleman, who is gambled away by her brother to a famous musician, Liam Henderson. Freya is in need of money, and Liam is in need of a live-in maid. It seems like the perfect deal except Liam is a notorious drunk and a womaniser and Freya is a defiant, stubborn struggling artist. They’re so different, and so they (unsurprisingly) clash.

I ended up loving this book, but the first 50 pages were a bit of a struggle. Freya seemed to have too much internal dialogue, and complained a little too much. There was a fair bit of info dumping in the opening chapters, and Freya seemed like she carried no backbone whatsoever. Her brother drunkenly gambles her away and she doesn’t’ really try very hard to stop him.

“He won me in a bet,” I explained, crossing my arms angrily over my chest.
“He won a person? That can’t be right,” she frowned, turning back to me with a steaming cup of coffee. “What’s your name again?”
“Freya,” I mumbled.
“And where is Liam?” she asked, walking back out into the living room, me following obediently behind her.

Despite these initial flaws, the story does improve. I started to really like Freya and I started to enjoy the quirks and banter between her and Liam. He seems like the kind of person who has always gotten what he wanted, except when she walked into his life and everything changed. Liam starts to care for her, and he sweeps her up into the fame that accompanies his job.

I enjoyed the characterisation and the dialogue in the book. I think Theresa captured their dynamic really well and the writing was effortless. The development of the story at times was slow, but still enjoyable.

There did feel like there was a fair bit of repetition in the plot that could’ve perhaps been condensed. Liam made an awful lot of mistakes, and then Freya just forgave him. And then he made another mistake. But Freya forgave him. And so on. After a while, it seemed a bit unrealistic and it made Freya look weak. I would’ve liked her to be just as defiant in the relationship as she seemed to be outside of the relationship.

Despite all the time we had spent together, I still felt as if he was keeping his distance with me. I was frustrated, not only at him but myself. I couldn’t believe how much his distance was affecting me. I tried to convince myself that it didn’t, but deep down I knew it did.

One of the strongest elements of the book are the secondary characters, in particular Liam’s publicist and her family, and Liam’s best friends and bandmates. Theresa has woven them into the story quite often and they provide comic relief and help drive the plot forward. Even Frey’s father and brother, despite being terrible people at some points in the novel, are intriguing characters and they really add depth to the book.

If you’re a lover of romance fiction and enjoy a good story with fantastic characters, then I’d definitely recommend Beastly Lights. It’s very Beauty and the Beast, which is awfully timely at the moment. There’s a lot of drama to keep you reading, and plenty of humour to make you laugh.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. You can buy your copy of Beastly Lights on Amazon HERE

Beastly Lights
Theresa Jane
April 5th, 2017
Inkitt Publishers

***

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

1. Congratulations on the publication of Beastly Lights. How did you find the writing process?
It consumed my life. Especially at the start, when I couldn’t seem to get my thoughts down fast enough. Then as it got more complicated the process slowed down dramatically. It got to the point where I wasn’t writing for months and then I would come back and have to reread the whole thing just to figure out a direction.

When I began I had a rough idea of where I wanted to get it was just a matter of getting from where the characters were to where they needed to be. I’m a night owl so I spent a lot of nights up till all hours writing and editing. Then regretting it the next day when I needed to go to university or work. I would write things on the train, in lectures and on notepads at work. And when I wasn’t writing, I was thinking about it.

2. Beastly Lights was originally fan fiction. How long were you writing fan fiction and how did your writing develop over that time?
I started writing fan fiction when I was waiting for the third instalment of The Selection to come out. I was reading other stories on the site and kept thinking, I could write better than this, so I did. I was 19 and I had no idea what I was doing with my life (still don’t) and so I spent my time writing.

I’ve never considered myself a writer and usually I have no idea what I’m doing. I just open up a word document or a notebook and hope for the best. Most of the time, I think my writing is the worst thing to ever be committed to paper but I keep writing anyway. In regard to my writing development, I couldn’t with all confidence say I am any better now than I was then, but I have gotten better at writing even when I don’t want to.

3. This book made me happy, sad, hopeful, frustrated and made me laugh a lot. What do you want readers to take away from the story?
When I first planned this story out it was a play on the fairytale “Beauty and the Beast”. Originally, it was called The Beauty is the Beast and what I wanted to focus on was how the bright lights of fame often twisted beauty into something monstrous. It got a little messier than I had anticipated but mostly, I wanted people to see that to find yourself you first have to be brave enough to lose yourself.

4. In the book, Liam needs to learn to understand his past so that it doesn’t hinder his future with Freya. He also had a tendency to be quite possessive and difficult. Was it hard writing Liam’s character?
It was very hard because I didn’t want to push people too far to the point of loathing him. I knew when I was writing him that people weren’t going to like him at first and whenever people would comment about it I would always tell them to just keep reading because there was something in him worth waiting for. It was hard when people said they didn’t like him because I knew his story and I knew what he was thinking but they didn’t get to see that until Freya did.

5. At times, Freya felt scared to say how she really felt. How important was it to you that she stood up for herself and expressed her feelings?
Very important, when I was writing her a big problem for me was that maybe I wasn’t making her strong enough. I wanted to convey the uncertainty of her situation and how it can throw us off centre. Especially because in her life she was already uncertain of who she was and it was only magnified under the scrutiny of Liam’s life.

It’s easy to lose ourselves. It’s also easy to judge her and ask why she wasn’t stronger but we see it all the time. We will endure a lot for love. Whether its love for your family, your friends or the one person you think you want to spend the rest of your life with. I wanted her to be strong but I didn’t want her to be inauthentic.

6. You’re a young writer. What advice would you give to people who want to take the plunge and write their own novel?
Be prepared to lose sleep. Your ideas are going to hit you at the most inopportune times and you need to write them down. Otherwise, you’ll end up like I did, three weeks down the track trying to remember that random thought I had at four in the morning that was the best thought I’d ever had in my life. Of course it probably wasn’t, but that’s not what I was telling myself when I was trying to come up with something new.

My only other piece of advice would be to never stop writing. Even when you think it’s rubbish. It’s better to write it and delete it later than to never write at all. You’ll be no worse off for writing it.
Oh, and read. Always be reading.

7. What are you currently reading?
Hard question, what I’m reading generally depends on my mood but, on my bedside table right now is “The Circle,” by Dave Eggers.

8. How do you find the editing process? What tips would you give to other people editing their own work?
I know this is probably going to sound awful but I hated it. Every time I reread my work I wanted to delete it. I tried to motivate myself by telling myself that it was the best part, that this is where the real writing happens but I wasn’t very persuasive. The most frustrating part was, even when I had read a chapter seventeen times over, it still was perfect.
I’d say the only advice I have is don’t do it at 3am in the morning. You will not be successful in making it better than the first draft. And your future self will not thank you for it.

9. How did you find writing alternate POV? Did you find it easy jumping between Freya and Liam? Was it seamless?
I’m always afraid when I jump from one POV to another that they won’t sound any different and people will get confused. It was especially hard with Liam because he’s a guy and I am most definitely not a guy and I can’t even begin to imagine what goes on inside a guy’s head . So, his point of view is probably my best summation of what I believe happens in a guy’s head, but who knows.

10. What else are you working on right now?
Currently, I’ve got a few works in progress but nothing I’m especially sold on. Which is probably my way of saying that I had no idea I was ever going to get published and never thought anybody would ask me what I was doing next.